36 Resistance by Fluids to Electric Conduction. 
Among these philosophical placebos, the latest, I believe, is the 
“new imponderable,” to account for the magnetic phenomena of 
the human body, proposed, like the others, in lieu of a scientific 
induction. Even the majestic intellect of Humboldt gave in to 
the prevailing method, and tolerated an hypothetical ether sup- 
posed to impede the planets by impinging against their sides. 
This host of “imponderables,” lie with a ponderous weight 
upon the mind, though in substance they be lighter than air, nay, 
composed of that stuff that dreams are made of. They consume 
more valuable thought than the syllogisms of the scholastics, and 
when it is considered how many thousands of ingenious and 
powerful intellects have exhausted their whole energies in the 
endeavor to build worlds out of this dust in the mind’s eye,—this 
nebulous matter of intellect, this hypothesis,—a mixed feeling of 
compassion and despair rises in the throat ;—and this too while 
we are hearing lectures on the inductive philosophy, and reading 
“ Accounts of the a os and triumphing in the scientific ad- 
vancement of the age. ery of exultation and progress was 
never louder than about sinetity years since, when the human 
intellect groaned under the heaviest mass of hypotheses that 
science was ever burdened with. At that very time too, when 
the only perfect theory known was the Newtonian one of grav- 
itation, nothing was more customary than to pity the oe 
smile over the vagaries of Plato and Heraclitus,—when in 
deed, the secret of hypothesis and of true theory were alike pl 
foundly vicereesed by those ancients; though applied only to 
the facts and processes of the intellect, ina style so elevated ar 
exact as to have the air of inspiration. 
Yet, one may venture to predict from the tone of the best sci- 
entific writers of this day, and from the progress and method of 
theorizing employed by the most intelligent investigators, that the 
reign of the hypothetical methed is at an end, and that the true 
inductive method will soon carry our knowledge to its height. » 
New York, Nov. 6, 1847. 
pat 
Arr. V.—On the Risteitnts presented by Fluids to Electric 
Conduction ;* by Even N. Horsrorn, Rumford Professor in 
the University at Cambridge, Mass 
